How I Met
by thebluefrenchhorn
Summary: The problem began far before Elena Gilbert entered the picture. No, for Damon, the problem began the moment he fell in love with his best friend, Hariel Potter, Death, destroyer of worlds. / a drabble series based off the prompt "how I met..."
1. your mother, death, destroyer of worlds

**How I Met:**

 _your mother, death, destroyer of worlds_

thebluefrenchhorn

* * *

"Scotch?" An accented voice murmured thoughtfully. Damon looked sideways to see a small slip of a girl seat herself upon the barstool beside his own, thin frame teetering upon it precariously as she leaned forward to balance her forearms upon the alcohol-stained counter. "A wonderful choice. I'll have one as well."

The bartender looked dubiously at her for a second, perhaps contemplating whether to ask her to produce an ID or not, before wandering off to assumedly fetch her drink.

Damon was a bit less convinced and instead regarded the burgundy haired woman with amusement. "A bit young to be drinking, aren't you?"

The girl shrugged, her vivid green gaze turning to meet his own icy blue. "I could say the same about you."

Damon smirked. "Now, I don't believe that's true," he said, waving his finger pointedly, glass of scotch swirling around in his other hand like a maelstrom of gold. "Because I'm twenty-four and you don't look a day over seventeen."

The girl clucked her tongue, almost mockingly and though she wore an oversized jumper that practically consumed her small form, her presence seemed to almost dwarf his in that moment.

"Ah, but looks can be deceiving," she murmured, voice a soft whisper. "You'd know a lot about that wouldn't you, Mr. Vampire?"

* * *

 **Author's Note:** It's late at night and I should be sleeping, but I suppose instead I'll be writing about Damon and Hariel Potter drinking. We'll see where this drabble series goes.

 **Disclaimer:** format loosely based off of the one used in _That One Night_


	2. luna lovegood, the prophet of christ

**How I Met:**

 _luna lovegood, prophet of christ_

thebluefrenchhorn

* * *

Damon was not a stalker.

No matter what she said.

Damon was not, nor would he ever be, a stalker.

At least not in this lifetime.

* * *

The blonde twerp wouldn't have been his first pick. In fact, she wouldn't have been his second or third or even fourth pick. But, by the time he found her, Damon wasn't just running out of options - he had none.

It had been over two weeks since the trail he had been following had grown cold - more than cold, freezing in fact - and with the pesky redhead nowhere in sight, things were drawing to disastrous close that alluded to the onslaught of a mental breakdown within the near future.

All of that considered, Damon felt like he could justify why, when the twiggy blonde with her wide silver eyes and ephermal voice whispered that she could help him find what he was looking for, he jumped upon her with the glee of a starved man.

 _Metaphorical_ glee.

He did not eat her.

But, in hindsight, he really wished he had.

* * *

"I don't understand why we have to discuss this over tea." Damon said, exchanging a dubious glance with the steaming cup held within his grasp, the emblem of some outdated British band merrily smiling back at him.

"And I don't understand why you don't understand why we need to be discussing these matters over tea," the blonde, Luna Lovegood as she had introduced herself earlier, responded with the same sort of circular logic that had plagued their conversations up until that point. "All the best conversations are held over tea."

She paused, toying with the radish that brazanely dangled from her ear, before turning her wide, evanescent gaze upon him. "I think it has something to do with the warmth," she mused, "it must be for I can attest that I've always thought better on a warm stomach than a cold one."

Her phrasing was odd and winding, rising and falling with no real discretion for rhythm, yet spoken with such conviction that Damon wanted to believe her for a moment.

Not that he did, of course.

Because he wasn't fucking insane.

Which, apparently, was the crux of the problem.

Or, at least, in the blonde's eyes as she regarded him with disappointment.

"You don't believe me, do you?" she murmured, voice full of solemn pity as if he was the one who needed saving in this scenario. "It's the nargles, it must be."

A strained smile slid upon Damon's face and he could feel the mug cracking with his vampiric strength. "No, I don't believe it's the nargles."

"It must be them then," the girl shook her head despondently "not believing they are the cause increases the likelihood of them being the culprit by tenfold. Nargles are strange like that."

She leaned back as if she was exceedingly proud to have educated him about such a fact. She probably was and, with that lying in the hidden corner of his mind, the urge to strangle her became that much more prevalent.

"But, you can still help me, right?" he urged in an almost desperate manner, searching in vain for some fleeting reason to validate the strange occurance of a lunch he had just put himself through.

"I'm not sure. You need _a lot_ of help."

Damon ignored her comment. "But can you help me with my search?" he pressed.

"Stop searching?" Luna offered, voice uncertain yet unwavering. "Stalking isn't exactly a healthy habit."

"For the last time, I am not stalking her," Damon stressed, "I don't even know her name. All that I know is that she apparently knows a lot about me which suggests she's the stalker in this case."

Luna shrugged, radiating a disregard that suggested she was above things as petty as his qualms. "Her name is Hariel and she will find you long before you even get as much of an inkling of where she might be."

Damon frowned. "Why do you say that?"

"Because she's God," Luna answered with the sincerity of a priestess and the disposition of a cult-fanatic that all but screamed at Damon to leave the premises as soon as possible.

He did just that too, standing up dismissively and striding away from the mad girl and her mad ramblings towards the sanity of the outside world. For what a wretched place the universe had shown itself to be, it had nothing upon the cold and unwavering eyes held within that bizarre prophet of a girl.

No lead was better than that freakshow.

"You can't hide from God," the blonde called at his retreating figure.

Her eyes were heavy as they lingered upon him, carrying a weight that no human deserved to possess. But, Damon wasn't a human, he was a vampire, and for all that they were unsettling, he batted them away from the forefront of his mind with surprising ease.

"Sure I can," he murmured, "I have been doing it for over one hundred years."

* * *

God has no place in his kingdom,

No welcome mat,

For the wretched creatures,

That lurked within alleys,

And beneath children's beds.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Thank you for the kind words - your interest and input is humbling. Since it's so early into the game, please feel free about leaving prompt suggestions. I can't say that I'll write them, but I'm definitely interested.


	3. mundungus fletcher, failed mugger

**How I Met:**

 _mundungus fletcher, failed mugger_

thebluefrenchhorn

* * *

"Please don't eat me!"

Damon wanted to laugh. There, trembling before him, redhair askew, was the hobbit on crack.

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you," his lips curled into a grin, "I'm just going to make you hurt a lot."

* * *

Mundungus Fletcher had been an unfortunate side effect of hunting down Hariel Potter.

Not that Fletcher had even a semblance of understanding about who Damon was searching for or the fact that he was aware of the wizarding world to begin with. Instead, he had just seen Damon, zeroed in on his ridiculously gaudy daylight ring, and attempted to mug him with all of the dignity of drunkard.

Damon was not amused.

In the slightest.

Which was how he found himself, brooding down upon the portly man with enough displeasure that Stefan would be jealous, in the back alley of some abandoned Scottish street.

"I'm very sorry, I must have mistaken you for someone else," he stuttered out, desperately attempting to alleviate the other man's anger.

The vampire just rolled his eyes in response. "Now, why would I believe you?" he drawled. "Especially after you tried to rip this off of me?"

He wiggled his fingers, grinning sardonically and not the least bit unaware of what exactly would have happened to him if Fletcher had actually been successful on nabbing the ring.

Of course, he never had a chance of getting it to begin with, but that didn't make Damon any less angry.

"No," he continued, blue eyes icy and dark veins creeping up his face like tendrils of ivy, "I think what I'm about to do is perfectly reasonable."

Fletcher began shaking more at that, desperation taking over as he revealed himself as the maggot that he was.

"Please, don't," he hurried out, "I can give you anything you want. Riches, artifacts, secrets, or celebrities. You want to see the family grimoire of the Burke family? Copper shards from the lost city of Atlantis? An autograph from Hariel Potter?"

Damon froze at that.

"What, did you say?"

Fletcher latched onto the statement like it was his lifeline. "Copper shards from the lost city of Atlantis?"

"No, no, after that," Damon pressed.

"An autograph from Hariel Potter?" He hedged, noting Damon's interest and confidence overtaking his features as a result. "I know her personally. Fought with her in the War. You know? You didn't strike me as the wizard type earlier, a bit muggle looking, mate, but I see it now. She's a mighty fine gal. I'm sure I can hook you up with a deal."

Damon had no idea what Mundungus Fletcher was going on about nor did he particularly care all that much because the other man had said something. He had said he knew Hariel Potter and he know how to get her.

That was the closest Damon had gotten within the entire last month and he wasn't about to give it up.

A smirk slid across his face.

"Looks like you're in luck, Fletcher."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** and so the quest for Hariel Potter continues. In which Damon meets the scumbag of the Wizarding World and Mundungus Fletcher proves to be an even bigger asshole than previously thought, releasing the secrets of the Wizarding World to a complete outsider.


	4. the hollow grounds of sinners

**How I Met:**

 _the hollow grounds of sinners_

thebluefrenchhorn

* * *

Damon was a lot of things.

Many of which were terrible and twisted and dark and not at all human.

No, never human.

Becoming a vampire had erased that side of him, eroding it for years and years until all that remained was a bitter creature that wore the faces of men.

Or, at least he had thought so.

Because the twist of pain, dull and aching and less like a stake to the heart and more of a deeply buried splinter, begged to differ.

* * *

The Scottish countryside in the late summer was truly a sight to behold. Full of lush greenery and wildflowers smiling up towards the afternoon sky. There, the sun rested at high noon before lazily beginning its descent downward, painting the world in amber hues.

It was the type of view Damon once enjoyed, back when the blood he chocked down was his own and he swam through the wretched pits of hellfire that scorched Virgina with crimson stains. The Damon of yesteryear who wasted, dying, in grotesque gardens where bullets and carnage sprouted from the ground like carrion temples. Henry and him and all of the barely of age and terribly young soldiers, fighting for a nation barely out of its infancy.

All of them, holding onto a feeble flicker of hope to escape a pointless death for a revolution whose end had been for told far before it had ever dared to begin. The breathless wonder encapsulated among the rolling viridian hills and cerulean skies and beneath the golden orb far above them. A fleeting moment of beauty amidst the confines of a war that deserved not a single claim to it.

He had cried at the sight of it. Hands caked in the blood of his enemies and cousins and brothers whose blood dripped from the ledger resting atop his shoulder and coursing through the twisted mockery of survival he had been granted. And him, falling upon his knees like the wretched sinner he was in those green pastures where no shepherds dared to enter and sheep roamed aimlessly.

He still cried whenever he saw a view akin to it.

Christ, he was crying right now.

Silent and barely noticeable, but still there all the same.

He didn't want to be, but he couldn't help it.

Even after a century and a half, a part of him still clung to the visage, born from a memory that had kept him - not whole, but not irreparably broken - through the somber nights where death came to collect his piteous sacrifices.

Things like that weren't lost easily, no matter how hard one tried.

And Damon had tried a lot.

* * *

For all that Icarus had tricked himself into believing,

God was unescapable,

And evasion from the past,

Ever so very fleeting.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** a brief stop of self-reflection on Damon's Odysseus journey for the great and powerful and so terribly elusive Hariel Potter.


	5. london for a second time

**How I Met:**

 _london for a second time_

thebluefrenchhorn

* * *

Mundungus Fletcher was going to die.

And Damon?

He was going to be the one to kill him.

* * *

He was back in London.

Over three months had passed and Damon was finally back in London. Before him, stood a violently red door that looked so terribly out of place within the drab hallway that it inhabited. It was on the fifth floor of an apartment complex, only three blocks away from the bar that had started it all - this whole ridiculous manhunt of his.

It didn't seem like a place that anyone would want to live. It was too aged and too old; the type of home that housed weary spirits and people with too little time on their hands. Yet, within it all, stood that ridiculously red door, acting as a vivid pop of life within an otherwise barren hall.

Damon knew it was the place.

He didn't know why, but he knew it was.

And it hadn't been any easy place to find. Mundungus had made sure of that.

He had fed Damon a false lead, sending him on a wild goose chase across the British Isles. Damon had followed that trail for weeks before stopping to consider the actual likelihood of finding Hariel in some backwater farmhouse. That had been hours upon hours of his time wasted solely because that little troll of a man had somehow decided to develop a moral compass. Something that was almost beside the point, considering the fact that Damon didn't want to hurt Hariel. Sure, he wanted to find out how she knew he was a vampire, which could involve a creative approach when it came to attaining that information, but he wasn't going in there wanting to pop her head off Stefan style.

Fletcher's lack of faith in him was objectively offensive. It was suffice to say that if Damon ever saw him again, London's black market would have a job vacancy.

But, plotting murder was for another time. Right now, there were more important things.

Damon reached towards the red door, rapping his knuckles against it in clear, sharp bursts. The sound reverberated in the otherwise silent hallway and the door swung open almost instantaneously, as if it had expected his company and had already made plans for how to best accommodate him.

Within it, emerged the slender figure of a woman - barely more than a girl, really. Her arms were crossed as she gazed outwards at him, her eyes flicking from his beaten shoes to his well-worn jacket with amusement.

"Do you stalk all the girls that you meet at bars?" she questioned, arching an eyebrow. Her voice sounded exactly as he remembered it. "Or am I merely the exception?"

"It's not bars that I've got a problem with," he replied. "It's really more of the privacy part of it. My little, ah, what do you Brit's like to say? My _bloody_ secret."

An unfamiliar sound escaped her and it took Damon amount to realize that it had been a snort.

"An immortal with a toddler's sense of humor? How charming."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Well, do you really believe that you're the only supernatural creature in all of London?"

"Enough of this," he snapped, running a hand through his hair out of frustration. "That's not what I'm trying to ask you."

"But, isn't Damon?" Hariel continued, her eyes dancing with mirth as if his mere existence provided some pitable form of entertainment for her. She shook her head. "You vampires are all the same. You're all idiots before _Death_."

* * *

 **Author's Note:** It's been awhile, hasn't it? Thank you for the continued support.


	6. teddy lupin, werewolf brat

**How I Met:**

 _teddy lupin, werewolf brat_

thebluefrenchhorn

* * *

Damon didn't need to reference a few hours ago to know that, with absolute certainty, this wasn't the way that he had planned to spend his afternoon. In fact, for all of his elongated life span—even those pesky years during the eighties that he preferred to forget had ever existed—he had never even considered spending his afternoon in this manner.

But, here he was, his body barely supported by a tiny, little, plastic, red chair, as a toddler tried to force feed him milk from an ornate teacup.

It didn't get any better after that.

* * *

Thirty minutes prior to what he would later describe as 'the incident', Damon had found himself in a starring contest with Hariel.

"You mean to tell me that you," he gestured towards all four feet and eleven inches of her form, "are the so called embodiment of death."

He stared at her incredulously, one of his hands thrown up in exasperation as the other worked to keep the door propped open in case she decided to slam it in his face. "Do you have any idea how insane that sounds?" he pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a puff of air. "Trust me, lady, I know crazy. I lived through the fifties and they used _turtle cartoons_ to promote bomb safety. Heck, only a couple weeks ago, I ran into one of your cult fanatics. But, this? This is a whole new level of insane."

Hariel tilted her head to the side in question, looking an awful lot like a misplaced puppy. "I have cult fanatics?" she repeated with confusion, before murmuring thoughtfully, "Ginny _did_ go through that 'phase' in second year by collecting my hairs, so it shouldn't be all that inconceivable..."

She trailed off and Damon didn't even bother to cover his groan of frustration. What was with these people? First his wannabe mugger and now this? He had hoped that Hariel, of all the eccentric characters he had run into recently, would at least be relatively normal. She had seemed so at the bar, coy and secretive, but still with a reasonable grasp on her sanity. Apparently he was wrong.

"A girl collected your hair and what you're hung up on is the fact that a crazy," he stopped, searching for the word she had used. "A crazy _nargal_ lady seems to worship you?"

At this, understanding dawned on Hariel's face. "Was she blonde by any chance?"

Damon grimaced, remembering the mess of platinum strands that had seemed to be everywhere except where they were supposed to be. Honestly, one had ended up in his tea of all things—it was disgusting! "Trust me, she was definitely blonde."

"Then it was probably Luna!" Hariel exclaimed, her features morphing to accommodate a small smile. "I can understand the confusion, though. She's brilliant, but certainly one of a kind."

 _That's one way to put it_ , Damon thought, internally rolling his eyes, before rehashing his previous thoughts. "You seriously don't believe that you're Death, right?"

"It's not about believing," Hariel responded, her eyes suddenly hard. They were brighter than before, an almost poisoness green as they flashed with emotion. "It simply is. Whether you believe it or not doesn't change that."

Damon opened his mouth, preparing to abject but, before he had a chance, Hariel silenced him him with a look. It wasn't a glare. In fact, it wasn't even all that malicious. But, it was heavy, the air filled with the same heady weight that had smothered him the first time they met, and Damon couldn't help but snap his jaw shut.

"Don't ask me for a demonstration," she continued, her hands bunched in that same oversized jumper she always seemed to wear. "I may be new to this whole Death thing, but I know better than to barter myself off like some one-trick pony."

"You're new to this whole death thing?" Damon questioned dubiously.

He was pretty sure that death had always been thing. No, he was _definitely_ sure that death had always existed. He had drained the life out of enough humans to know that for a fact.

"Don't get me wrong, you're spinning quite the story and while I admire the tenacity, from one fast talker to another, I just want to let you know that denying the previous existence of death doesn't necessarily sell your story."

Hariel blushed, tugging on one of her unruly burgundy curls. The strand, juxtaposed to the glaring red of her halfway opened door, appeared darker than it had previously in the warm lighting of the bar.

"I didn't mean that things haven't died before," she mumbled, blinking her big, green eyes. As unnerving as they were, Damon could admit that they were rather pretty with their soft almond shape and the dusting of dark red lashes that framed them. "I just meant that I've come into my inheritance as Death rather recently. I'm still trying to figure everything out. I think time travel may have played a part..."

Damon blinked in response, ceasing his soft tapping on the door. He wasn't even going to try to open the jar of crazy that was the second part of her response. "So you're saying that you're like a... baby death?"

"I guess." Hariel laughed. She drug a hand through her unruly locks, messing them up even more than before. "I never really thought of it like that."

Her brows furrowed in thought, small lips forming a pout and Damon couldn't help but release a chuckle at the tiny woman before him.

"Well then, Baby Death," he stated—rather charismatically if he did say so himself—,"how do you feel about inviting me in then? As nice as it is talking to you in the rundown hallway of your apartment building, I'd really like a drink." He flashed his fangs for a second, dragging his tongue over the right one's tip. "I'm feeling quite _peakish_."

Hariel just responded with a glare, opening her door the rest of the way. "You can come in, Damon, but there better not be any funny business."

"Yes, ma'am." Damon responded with a cheery salute.

* * *

"What's with the kid? You look way too young to be a mother." Damon said, eyeing the mini-human that had appeared in a blue blur the minute Hariel had stepped into the room.

The little urchin was glaring daggers at him from where he stood behind Hariel's leg, tucked rather neatly into her side. "My Hari," he stressed with childish vindication before flashing his violently turquoise hair to the pleasant burgundy of Hariel's locks.

 _Well damn_ , Damon thought, _that wasn't something you saw everyday._

"Teddy, please be nice," Hariel gently reprimanded. She crouched down, eye-level with the kid as she ruffled his hair affectionately. "Damon is a friend of mine and it would mean a lot to me if you got along." Accepting the small nod from the unhappy squirt, she turned her gaze towards Damon. "He's my godson." she explained fondly.

"Hari says that my parents were _heroes_." The little urchin piped up proudly and, ouch, if Damon actually had a heart he might have felt a little bad for the little demon. Unfortunately, he didn't and he was stuck contemplating Hariel's earlier words. How did she even know his name to begin with? He didn't remember giving it to her.

Before he could ask, however, the kid had piped up again. "You smell weird, mister," he wrinkled his small nose in distaste, "I don't like it. It's icky."

"Teddy!" Hariel admonished. "Is that a nice thing to say?"

The kid shuffled his feet uncomfortably, before puffing up his cheeks. "But it's true!"

Hariel sighed. "Damon's different than us. That's why he smells a little funny to you." She tweaked his nose with a laugh. "You probably smell funny to him too."

Damon frowned. Now that Hariel had mentioned it, the little menace did smell a bit strange. Not overwhelmingly so, but certainly enough to suggest that he wasn't completely human. It was almost like... _ah, so that's what it was_ , Damon realized, _that's why she didn't have any problems with me coming in. She probably assumed that she could just have the kid bite me if things went south_.

Almost as if reading his mind, Hariel shot him a glare. "Don't even think about it."

Shaking his head, Damon raised his hands in surrender. "Don't worry, I won't touch a hair on Werewolf Brat's head."

"My name's Teddy," the little boy corrected, his little hands scrunched into tiny fists. "T-E-D-D-Y, okay? It's not that hard."

Before the argument could escalate (as much as one could escalate when one of the participants was barely older than a toddler), Hariel cut in. "Teddy, you ought to be nicer to Damon. After all, he agreed to watch you while I did some errands."

Damon froze. She wouldn't, would she? Judging by the small smirk on her face and the equally as small child barreling towards him, she would.

"I still don't like you, mister, but maybe I'll like you more if you play tea party with me," the child babbled excitedly and it took all of Damon's self control not to snap his wrist as his hand latched onto his own.

"You let your godson play _tea party_?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes, I do," she replied defiantly. "It's what makes him happy." With a swift jerk of her hand, she brushed her unruly locks out of her face, trying in vain to make them neater before smoothly slipping on her jacket. "I expect no funny business," she asserted.

"How do you know that I won't just leave?" Damon shot back. It was his turn to be defiant.

"Because you still have questions that you need to be answered and I won't be saying anything if I return with my godson unsupervised," she responded, wrapping a shimmering scarf around her neck. "I'm assuming you know better than to try to drink from him?" she inquired, her gaze sharp. Damon nodded. "Good. If you get thirsty, there's a bloodbag in the fridge. I picked it up this morning."

Then, with a loud crack, she was gone, leaving Damon staring blankly at the place she had occupied previously, her small godson hanging off his arm like the little limpet that he was.

 _How did she know that he was coming?_

* * *

 **Author's Note:** Oh, Hariel, you try so hard to be suave, don't you? But, everyone knows that you're still just a baby death. And, yes, Teddy knows about being part-werewolf, because I just can't see her lying to him after she was lied to all of her life.


End file.
